


Lifesavers

by cagestark



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (No real cheating), But Angst Along the Way, Cheating, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Insecurity, M/M, Peter is in his 20's, Self Esteem Issues, Slut Shaming, The Author Projects, Tony and Peter are Married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 02:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20250658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cagestark/pseuds/cagestark
Summary: Beck shows Peter a picture that he didn't want to see and doesn't want to believe is true.





	Lifesavers

**Author's Note:**

> take it with a grain of salt pls

Peter comes to Stumptown Café for food and drink. They have full espresso bar, drip coffee, brew-by-the-cup offerings and cold brews. On cold mornings when he is bundled in his coat and scarf, hat low over his curls, he can smell the coffee half a block away when just passing by that tattoo parlor that he can’t convince Tony to step foot into, no matter how much he begs to get matching tattoos. The pastries at the café are divine, and the muffins are borderline legendary.

He comes for the food and drink. But he stays for the atmosphere: glistening dark wood, lighting just bright enough to read comfortably by, with tables secluded enough that no one will bother him or gasp, muttering under their breath (though Peter hears. He always hears) _is that Peter Stark?_

Today he is there alone. Tony has been in Hong Kong for the last three days and isn’t due to return home until the day after next. While Peter misses him, it’s nice to spend some time alone and remember that he’s still a person independent of his older husband. It makes it easier to keep to his schedule too, of coming to the café and reading for a while.

Peter has the crumbs of a banana-nut muffin on his lap. His coffee is going cool, but he doesn’t mind because of the book open in front of him. He’s just reaching the climax—he’s hoping for a grand declaration of love and then maybe some erotica—

—and then someone else is there, plopping themselves down at the other side of the table, a manila folder in front of them. Peter glances up, eyes wide, trying to keep his face polite (it happens sometimes, especially in the mornings and afternoons when the café gets so busy that people will join strangers at tables, anywhere there is a free chair, truthfully), but all that goes out the window when he sees who it is.

Quentin Beck.

Peter groans, closing his book. His pulse thrums with anxiety. He must be losing his touch if he let this creep get close enough to ambush him without his special senses warning him. “Seriously, Beck? I was just getting to the good part.”

“Stay—look, you’ve got coffee left.”

“I’d rather not,” Peter says, putting the book into his satchel. “And anyway, I’ve just lost my appetite.”

Beck waves a hand, rolling his eyes. The guy is admittedly handsome, which makes his occupation and personality all the worse. The paparazzi are relentless of him and Tony, and the worst of them all is Quentin Beck. Peter should have known that as soon as the temporary restraining order he and Tony had filed against the creep ended, Beck would be back in their hair.

Tony is going to _flip_. Peter being a superhero doesn’t keep his husband from being overprotective.

“You’re probably right,” Beck says. “I wouldn’t have an appetite either in your shoes. Not if I had to see _this_.”

He opens the folder. Against his will—because it’s always so satisfying to ignore Beck and not give him the attention he craves—Peter glances at the open folder. There is a photograph, grainy by today’s standards, done in black and white. But it’s the content that steals the breath from Peter’s lungs.

It’s Tony. Fucking into a woman. She is on her hands and knees, long dark hair obscuring her face, but the details are good enough for him to see her hands fisting the sheets, her toes curling, the dimples in her spine. Then there is Tony behind her, kneeling on the bed, obviously balls deep. His head is tilted back, mouth open in ecstasy, one hand resting on the arched curve of her back and the other digging into her fleshy hip. Peter can smell the picture, can hear it—the sweat, the wet sounds of a good fuck, the scent of Tony’s cologne, the sounds his husband makes when he’s close but trying to hold off.

Beck’s hand interrupts Peter’s view of the photograph. One polished finger points down to the corner, where there is a time stamp.

It’s dated yesterday.

Peter’s legs lose the strength to stand. He collapses into the chair he just vacated, satchel hitting the floor with a soft thud. Beck coos across from him, and when Peter looks up, the man’s handsome face is twisted in sympathy. Then it gets blurry—probably from the tears that fill Peter’s eyes.

“Oh, Pete,” Beck says. He reaches for Peter’s hand but the younger man withdraws it, clenches them tightly in front of his stomach. The pressure against his tummy makes him feel a little less likely to be sick. “You didn’t know?”

“Where did you get this?” His lips are numb and his voice sounds far away. He can’t stop looking at the picture. He wishes that he could see the woman’s face. He wishes he didn’t have to see Tony’s, twisted in pleasure. It’s a face that Peter sees often, one he knows well.

“A friend who lives in Kowloon. He stood outside of Stark’s hotel for three days only getting cheap shots. So I told him, what about the apartment building next door? He’d get a bird’s eye view! And boy, he really got an eyeful, if you know what I mean.”

“Stop,” says Peter, holding up a hand. His mouth works on instinct. “I don’t believe you.”

Beck smiles gently. “Poor kid. In denial, huh? I wish I could say the rest of us didn’t see this coming. When you and Tony tied the knot last year, all the headlines were wondering how the old playboy would do in the face of monogamy. I guess now we know.”

“Tony loves me.”

“Who are you trying to convince? Me? You?” Beck taps the faceless woman. “_Her_?”

Peter grabs the photograph with an angry hand. It crumples in his grip. He stands so quickly that he bumps the table, his coffee tipping dangerously. “We’ll see you back in court soon,” Peter snarks. “Hire a better lawyer next time. Or don’t—maybe you should save your money to payoff all the bears in prison.”

Beck just laughs. “I won’t be worrying for money after I sell that picture to E!News. Go ahead and keep that one, by the way, I’ve got plenty more.”

“Hope you jerk your dick right off to them,” Peter says through his teeth. He turns before Beck can see the tears in his eyes, nearly knocks down a young couple standing by the doors discussing what to order. The apology he mutters is lost in the noise of the shop, and then he is pushing open the doors and running out onto the street, stuffing the photograph into his satchel.

Peter can’t make it home. He finds a nice alley way and cries there among the graffiti and refuse, glass under his shoes, sensitive nose scrunching from the scent. The brick wall is rough against his back as he slumps against it, sobbing into his hands. The people walking by are nice enough to turn their heads away and pretend they don’t see or hear him. That’s New York, he guesses.

Tony. Tony. The man he’d been in love with since he was old enough to love. The one who had patiently pretended not to notice Peter’s clumsy advantages after he returned from college, had waited for Peter to scrape together enough nerve to ask him out properly. The man who had proposed on a whim at two in the morning walking home in the snow together after Peter asked to take the scenic route.

Tony had fucked someone else. Had slept with someone else. Maybe he hadn’t made love to her—but had he been making love to Peter, then? One didn’t hurt the people one loved. The idea of having sex with another person made Peter’s stomach roll.

On one hand, it doesn’t make sense. Tony is the picture of devotion. He watches the silly movies that Peter prefers, never forgets a birthday or anniversary, wakes Peter every morning with a kiss on the forehead and a murmured, _heading to work. Go back to sleep. Love you, baby._ How could Peter have been so thoroughly fooled? Surely there would have been signs. Discontent. Fighting. Yet, nothing.

And on the other hand, it makes perfect sense. Because how could a skinny boy from Queens ever manage to keep Tony’s sole attention? He was a virgin when they began dating: virgins were kinks to be crossed off a list, not partners to spend satisfying sex lives with. The feelings of inadequacy that had been planted like seeds in his heart at a young age from a hard life—he thought they’d gone away, but instead they’d just been buried. And now they are sprouting, thorny vines that squeeze his heart.

Eventually, the tears run dry. He walks home in a fog, nose stuffed, head heavy. There are private elevators up to the penthouse, so he runs into no one on the way up. But there is someone there.

Colonel Rhodes—though he is no longer a colonel after his injury during the Avenger’s dispute at the airport in Germany. Rhodey has always made Peter anxious, overeager to please. This is his husband’s best friend—a brother, Tony has often confided to Peter—for the last thirty years. Peter didn’t have to worry about impresses Tony’s parents. There was just Rhodey.

The man is serious-faced, noble, brave, strong. He’s currently sitting on the sofa, talking on the phone. When Peter comes in, Rhodey ends the call.

“Hey, kid, sorry to stop in unannounced. FRIDAY let me in—said she sent a text alert to your phone.”

“Oh,” Peter says. His phone is a warm weight in his pocket, untouched. “Yeah. What did you need?”

“Tony told me he’d left some papers—hey. Are you okay?”

Peter bursts into tears. Through his blurry eyes, he can see the uncomfortable look on Rhodey’s face even as the man bounds across the room to retrieve a box off tissues off of the end table and deliver them into Peter’s grateful hands. “What is it?” Rhodey asks. “Are you hurt? Did somebody hurt you?”

“Tony,” Peter wails.

Rhodey’s face blanches. “What is it—god—a heart attack? What happened to him?”

Peter shakes his head, clutching a tissue to his streaming nose. He goes to the kitchen island and tosses his satchel on top, rummaging through it for the crumpled photograph. It slides off of the slick marble and onto the floor, and Peter is too distraught to pick it up. He can’t look at it again. He’ll be sick.

Cautiously, Rhodey picks up the picture and stares at it. Blinks. Like he isn’t sure what he’s seeing. Peter can relate.

“He’s cheating on me,” Peter says. Acknowledging it out loud just makes him cry harder. His heart feels close to breaking, a physical pain in his chest. He clutches at it with his hand, but the ache doesn’t abate.

Rhodey lets the hand holding the photograph lower until it hangs by his side. For several long moments—far too many to be comfortable—Rhodey stares, his face empty. Then at last he says, “Are you _stupid_?”

Those words reach out and treat Peter as kindly as a slap in the face. He blinks his eyes clear(er), mouth opening and closely swiftly twice in a row. Maybe he heard the Colonel wrong—

“Well?” Rhodey asks. “Are you going to answer me?”

“I’m—I—what was the question?”

“Are you fucking stupid?”

“Then I heard you,” Peter snaps. “I just didn’t understand. How am I the stupid one?”

But even as he asks the question, his mind supplies him with several answers: he’s stupid for trusting that’d he’d be enough for Tony, he’s stupid for thinking a man who’s had so many sexual partners could ever settle down with one, he’s stupid for _trusting_—

“I warned Tony about this,” Rhodey says, shaking his head. “I told him—I said, Tony. Do you really want to date a child? You’re going to deal with childish problems. This, this insecurity? It’s a child’s game, Peter. Your lack of trust in Tony? The lack of trust in your _husband_? It’s insulting. I’ve known Tony since he was nearly half your age now, and he’s never been the kind of guy who would cheat on his partner.”

“The picture—”

“I see the fucking picture, kid.” Rhodey crumples it and tosses it over his shoulder. He stalks to the couch, stepping on the photograph inadvertently while he grabs his light jacket, shrugging it on over his shoulders. “And I don’t believe it. I trust my best friend. I know my best friend, and I thought you knew him too. I can’t believe you’d fall for the bullshit you’ve been spoon fed.” The man gets all the way to the door of the elevator before he stops again, looking over his shoulder. The disgust is palpable. “You’re going to break his heart. And I won’t forgive that.”

Then the doors open and the Colonel steps through him. He doesn’t look away from Peter even as the doors close. Once they have, Peter lets out a short scream, clutching at his hair. His head throbs from his shed tears. That didn’t go at all the way he might have expected it to. But of course Rhodey is going to take his best friend’s side.

Peter stalks to the picture and picks it up, smoothing away the wrinkles. He steels himself, breathing in deeply, before looking again. Now he is looking for any signs its photoshopped—strange proportions, warping, a lack of focus, a too-perfect physical appearance…but there is nothing. It’s crystal clear, clear enough that he can see the scars on Tony’s hands, burns and cuts from his time in the workshop. It’s real. Rhodey is wrong.

The shrill ringing of his cellphone cuts through the air. He fumbles a hand into his pocket—and no. God no. It’s Tony, the red emoji heart by his name mocking Peter’s agony. The phone rings while he clutches it in his hands, wondering what to do. Should he answer? Confront Tony now? Or wait until Tony comes back, to do it in person? Before he can decide, the phone stops ringing. The relief that gives him has his shoulders sagging. A true Gen Z, putting off his problems for another day.

But then a text message comes up. This he begrudgingly opens.

**Hey Peter Pan, you missed my call. Must be busy. Just wanted to let you know I’m thinking of you. Call me when you get the chance. I’m so bored I’m DYING xoxo (save me!)**

Peter’s hands tremble as he types a quick response.

**Not feeling good, going to bed early.**

**At 12:30 PM?**

Peter groans. Of course, Tony knows exactly what time it is in New York despite being halfway across the world. The guy is a genius after all—he probably knew without having to google it or check his watch.

**Gonna nap. Sorry. Real sick. **

**Anything I can do? **

“Leave me alone,” Peter mumbles under his breath. With his fingers, he types. **No thanks. Talk soon. **It takes nearly sixty seconds of agonizing before he tacks on hearts and kisses. If he acts any stranger, Tony might become suspicious. Their confrontation might move up on the schedule, and Peter just isn’t ready. He needs time. Time heals everything right? Maybe a few days will help heal him enough to confront Tony with a little dignity. He’ll settle for not bursting into tears immediately.

He spends the rest of the day in a fog. The television runs but he doesn’t see what’s on it. Sometimes he tries to pack, but there is so much—he has built an entire life here, with Tony. How can he pack it up in a single night? Sometimes, he finds himself standing at the window looking out over the view of New York. He feels so far away from it—and not just because of the height of the building. It’s like he’s outside of himself, watching.

As soon as the sun is setting, Peter let’s himself crawl into bed.

The picture is folded up and placed on the nightstand like some sort of mockery of a family photo. It’s dark, the blackout settings for Tony’s windows on, but Peter doesn’t need light to see the image. It’s burned onto the back of his brain.

“_Why_?” Peter cries into his pillow. He isn’t sure what question he’s asking—maybe it’s a lot of questions. But he knows that there is no good answer.

-

Peter doesn’t remember falling asleep. When he wakes, his head is throbbing, pillow still damp from his tears. He reaches for his phone stuffed haphazardly under the pillow where Tony usually rests his head. There are notifications—more texts from Tony—but Peter doesn’t even open them. He isn’t ready yet.

Sitting up only intensifies the ache in his head. He hasn’t had a headache this painful since the spider bite. It probably attributes to his other ailment: a broken heart. No superhuman healing can fix that. It feels like there is a hole that’s been punched through his chest, and he knows that he will never recover from this. Maybe he wasn’t Tony’s soulmate, but Tony is his. Peter won’t ever be able to love anyone the way he loved the older man.

Rubbing the crust from his eyes, Peter goes to take the photograph off of the nightstand.

Except, it isn’t there.

His heart clenches. What—where—did he wake in his sleep and reach for it, maybe? Peter strips the bed of blankets and sheets, but there is no picture. He searches the bathroom even, but the picture is gone. There is no maid, and if someone had accessed the tower (like Rhodey had) FRIDAY would have alerted him.

He finds it out in the living room.

It’s spread open on the coffee table in front of Tony. Tony is still dressed like he’s come home from the airport, jacket on, shoes on. His elbows are planted on his knees, face buried in his palms. At the sound of Peter’s entrance, he heaves a sigh and lets his hands fall.

Tony looks old(er). He looks to have aged even in just the week they’ve been apart, circles under his eyes, hair gray, frown lines deep and carved from stone. His expression is downright morbid, but still he lifts a few fingers in greeting. “Hey Pete,” he says in that deep, rumbling voice. It all hurts. The sight of him, the sound of him. It all hurts.

Peter begins to cry, wiping a palm at his wet cheeks. “You should be in China.”

“Rhodey called me. I caught an early flight home.”

“He—he had _no_ right to do that.”

“I didn’t cheat on you, Peter.”

“The picture is fake?”

Tony doesn’t respond. Peter asks again. At last, Tony shakes his head. “No,” he admits. “It’s real. But it’s old.”

“There’s a time stamp,” Peter says. He crosses the room carefully. There is room on the sofa beside Tony, but Peter chooses to sit in the armchair. From this angle, he has a front row seat to Tony’s agonized expression. It tugs at all of Peter’s heartstrings, and he can’t bear it. Even now, he can’t hates to be angry or cold to this man who he loved, loves, will always love. “It’s there in the corner, see?”

“I saw it,” Tony says. “But it’s an old picture.”

“How old?”

“I—” Tony stops. He rubs at his forehead. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know_ when it was taken?”

“No. Maybe—2011?”

“_May_be? How could you not _know_?”

“_Because_,” Tony says, voice growing in volume, though there is no anger there, just emphasis, just agony, just hurt. “Because I’ve slept with a lot of people, Peter!”

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” Peter mutters.

Tony sucks in a breath. “_Is_ that a problem? You knew that before we started dating. You knew I’ve had partners before you—”

“_I didn’t care_,” Peter wails. He scrubs at his eyes, but behind them there is an image of a woman with long dark hair, going home with bruises on her hips and an ache in her sex from Peter’s own husband. It doesn’t go away no matter how hard he scrubs. “I didn’t care until _now_! But now, now it all makes sense. I wasn’t enough for you.”

“You weren’t _enough for me_? Overlooking the obvious self-esteem issues you seem to be having—what am I? An animal? You think I just go around looking for anyplace to stick my cock? You think I’ve got some sort of insatiable appetite, some otherworldly itch that constantly needs scratched? You think that if there was something I needed, I wouldn’t come to _you_?”

“I _didn’t_. I thought you had changed when we started dating, after the Snap—”

Tony gets very still. “You thought I _changed_? I guess that tells me what you thought of me before.”

Peter waves a hand. “Everyone knows, Tony. You slept around.”

Tony can’t sit anymore. He stands and stalks to the windows, rests a shaking hand against the glass. He strips off his jacket suddenly, lets it drop to the floor. Peter watches numbly, unsure what’s happening. With the sun streaming in, Tony is almost nothing but a dark silhouette, but god it’s a good one. It’s one he wouldn’t have minded seeing every day for the rest of his life. Until now.

Beneath the jacket, Tony is still wearing his dress shirt. With care, he undoes the cuff links, lets them clatter to the floor, and begins to roll up the sleeves. “It’s stupid,” Tony mutters. “It’s stupid that this is the way I have to prove you wrong.”

“What?”

Tony turns his forearm up. There on his left forearm is a loose bandage the size of an apple, only two sides secured to his skin with tape. Gently, he peels the tape away. Peter has no idea what he’s looking at for an endless moment. The skin beneath the bandage is shiny, dark—it’s a tasteful spiderweb, with an ornate P in the center.

His breath catches. It’s a tattoo. Fresh, if the peeling skin is any indication.

“I got it on my first night in Hong Kong, when I was missing you,” Tony says, his voice dull. “You’ve been bugging me to get one with you, but that’s me, I guess. Doing things on impulse. No self-control. The receipt is in my suitcase, so you can check if you want.”

Shaking all over, Peter doesn’t go for the suitcase. He does reach for the picture, though. He has to—has to _check_, to make sure. And yes, there’s no tattoo on Tony’s forearm. Maybe it’s a mirror image, the tattoo on the other arm—but no, because he can clearly see the scar on Tony’s right hand where DUM-E dropped a soldering iron. No. Tony’s left forearm is exposed to the camera, and it is clean. Unmarked.

This picture was not taken yesterday the way Beck made him believe.

He tears the picture in half, then again, then again until the pieces are too small to be torn anymore. It only takes a handful of steps to cross around the coffee table and reach the window. Tony is sitting against it now, head resting back so his throat is long and exposed. The tattoo looks good. There is an undeniable part of Peter that thrills in having Tony marked as his own.

Then he sees the tears. Tony is _crying_.

Tony isn’t an overt crier. There are no sobs, no wails. His hands shake, his eyes water, and he looks so lost, so distant. But that is it. Peter crawls right into his lap, straddling his legs and hooking his arms around the back of the older man’s head to draw him forward, forehead pressed to Peter’s sternum. They can cry together, if they have to cry at all.

“’m not a slut, Pete,” Tony says. His voice doesn’t tremble, but the shakes are obvious when he reaches up to clutch at Peter’s t-shirt, fingers digging into the fabric to pull the younger man closer, closer still. Even after fucking up in this extraordinary way, Tony still loves him. Still holds him. Doesn’t push him away.

“I know,” Peter says, but it sounds lame, even to his own ears, after everything he has put them through.

Tony shakes his head where it’s pressed against Peter’s chest. “You don’t know. You _don’t_.”

“I do, though. I do. Rhodey was _right_,” says Peter through his tears. He sniffs wetly. “He was right. This isn’t on you. This is—these are my issues. I guess part of me still feels like that kid back in my bedroom in Queens. Feels like I-I’m not good enough for you. I felt like I was getting better about it, but seeing that picture, it was like it dug it all up again.”

His husband pulls away enough for his head to touch the glass again, staring up at Peter. His eyes are red from tears, from the no-sleep he likely got on the way home from China. He looks desperate, half-mad. “What do I have to do to make you believe it, Pete? Is there something I’m not doing right? I-I—”

Pressing his head back to Peter’s breast, Peter shakes his head, plants a kiss in the dark crown of hair. “What did I just say? This isn’t your fault. God, I should have just called you straight away. That’s what a mature adult would have done. Better yet, I shouldn’t have believed that asshole Beck—”

“_Beck_? Quentin Beck?” Tony groans. Even though it’s wet, it sounds a little like a laugh. “That should have been your first clue, baby. You know Beck is never up to anything good. He must have dug that picture up from somewhere and altered the time stamp.”

That’s what it all comes down to. Peter should have known better. He should have known better than to trust Beck, should have known better than to think that Tony could ever hurt him in such a way. Tony, who is the most loving, thoughtful, caring man that Peter has ever known. The most honorable man.

They sit clutching on to each other for dear life, each a lifesaver to the other, until their legs go numb. Peter helps Tony up off of the floor and takes him to the couch. The pieces of the photograph are scattered under their feet, morbid confetti. Tony reclines and Peter lays on him, ear to Tony’s heart where the arc reactor used to rest.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, at length. “I’ve got issues—that’s clear. But I want to fix them. I’ll—I’ll think of something. Therapy, maybe, if I need to. Whatever it takes. I don’t want anything to ever come between us again. Not someone else, and not my_self_.”

Tony hums. When he speaks, he sounds exhausted, on the verge of sleep, one hand tangled in the curls of Peter’s hair. “I love you, Peter. I can’t change my past, but you’re it for me, kid. The present. The future. All of it. No one else.”

Peter sits up just long enough to press a kiss to Tony’s lips—and yes, the man’s eyes are closed. Still, he smiles, even as he dozes off. Peter lets his head down again, careful not to brush his arm against Tony’s peeling tattoo.

Listening to that heartbeat, he believes and says: “_I know._”

**Author's Note:**

> comments and criticism welcome. tumblr is cagestark


End file.
